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But so many of Donnie's cronies are. 
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Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate. -
A year of unprecedented deception: Trump averaged 15 false claims a day in 2018
President Trump’s year of lies, false statements and misleading claims started with morning tweets.
Over a couple of hours on Jan. 2, Trump made false claims about three of his favorite targets — Iran, the New York Times and Hillary Clinton. He also took credit for the “best and safest year on record” for commercial aviation, even though there had been no commercial plane crashes in the United States since 2009 and, in any case, the president has little to do with ensuring the safety of commercial aviation.
The fusillade of tweets was the start of a year of unprecedented deception during which Trump became increasingly unmoored from the truth. When 2018 began, the president had made 1,989 false and misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database, which tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. By the end of the year, Trump had accumulated more than 7,600 untruths during his presidency — averaging more than 15 erroneous claims a day during 2018, almost triple the rate from the year before.
Even as Trump’s fact-free statements proliferate, there is growing evidence that his approach is failing.
Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans believe many of his most-common false statements, according to a Fact Checker poll from earlier this month. Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers — about 1 in 6 adults in the survey — did large majorities accept several, though not all, of his falsehoods as true.
Similarly, a November Quinnipiac poll found 58 percent of voters saying Trump wasn’t honest, compared with just 36 percent who said he was honest. The same poll found 50 percent saying he is “less honest” than most previous presidents, tying his own record for the highest share of registered voters saying so in Quinnipiac polling.
“When before have we seen a president so indifferent to the distinction between truth and falsehood, or so eager to blur that distinction?” presidential historian Michael R. Beschloss said of Trump in 2018.
Beschloss noted that the U.S. Constitution set very few guidelines in this regard because the expectation was that the first president would be George Washington and he would set the tone for the office. “What is it that schoolchildren are taught about George Washington? That he never told a lie,” the historian said. “That is a bedrock expectation of a president by Americans.”
Trump began 2018 on a similar pace as last year. Through May, he generally averaged about 200 to 250 false claims a month. But his rate suddenly exploded in June, when he topped 500 falsehoods, as he appeared to shift to campaign mode. He made almost 500 more in both July and August, almost 600 in September, more than 1,200 in October and almost 900 in November. In December, Trump drifted back to the mid-200s.
Trump’s midsummer acceleration came as the White House stopped having regular press briefings and the primary voice in the administration was Trump, who met repeatedly with reporters, held events, staged rallies and tweeted constantly.
Trump is among the more loquacious of recent presidents, according to Martha Kumar, professor emerita at Towson University, who keeps track of every presidential interaction with the media, dating to Ronald Reagan. Through Dec. 20, Trump held 323 short question-and-answer sessions with reporters, second only to Bill Clinton through the first 23 months, and granted 196 interviews, second to Barack Obama.
More than a quarter of Trump’s claims were made during campaign rallies. On Nov. 5, the day before the midterm elections, for instance, Trump held three rallies, yielding a total of 139 false or misleading claims. A review of every statement made by Trump at two of his earlier 2018 rallies found that he exaggerated or made up at least 70 percent of his assertions.
Almost as many false claims came during remarks at press events, and about 17 percent were the result of his itchy Twitter finger.
The president misled Americans about issues big and small. He told lies about payments that his now-convicted attorney says Trump authorized to silence women alleging affairs with him. He routinely exaggerates his accomplishments, such as claiming that he passed the biggest tax cut ever, presided over the best economy in history, scored massive deals for jobs with Saudi Arabia and all but solved the North Korea nuclear crisis.
He attacks his perceived enemies with abandon, falsely accusing Clinton of colluding with the Russians, former FBI Director James B. Comey of leaking classified information and Democrats of seeking to let undocumented immigrants swamp the U.S. borders.
The president often makes statements that are disconnected from his policies. He said his administration did not have a family separation policy on the border, when it did. Then he said the policy was required because of existing laws, when it was not.
The president also simply invents faux facts. He repeatedly said U.S. Steel is building six to eight new steel plants, but that’s not true. He said that as president, Obama gave citizenship to 2,500 Iranians during the nuclear-deal negotiations, but that’s false. Over and over, Trump claimed that the Uzbek-born man who in 2017 was accused of killing eight people with a pickup truck in New York brought two dozen relatives to the United States through “chain migration.” The real number is zero.
In one of his more preposterous statements of 2018, Trump labeled the Palm Beach Post as “fake news” for blaming him for traffic jams across the nation — when an article about the effect of low gas prices on driving habits never mentioned his name.
Sometimes, Trump simply attempts to create his own reality.
When leaders attending the U.N. General Assembly burst into laughter when Trump uttered a favorite false claim — that his administration had accomplished more in less than two years than “almost any administration in the history of our country” — the president was visibly startled and remarked that he “didn’t expect that reaction.” But then he later falsely insisted to reporters that the boast “was meant to get some laughter.”
In an October interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump emphatically denied he had imposed many tariffs. “I mean, other than some tariffs on steel — which is actually small, what do we have? . . . Where do we have tariffs? We don’t have tariffs anywhere,” he insisted. The newspaper responded by printing a list of $305 billion worth of tariffs on many types of U.S. imports.
Trump exaggerates when the facts are on his side.
He routinely touts a job-growth number that dates from his election, not when he took office, thus inflating it by 600,000 jobs. And although there’s no question Trump can draw supporters to his rallies by the thousands, he often claims pumped-up numbers that have no basis in fact. At a Tampa rally, he declared that “thousands of people” who could not get in are watching outside on a “tremendous movie screen.” Neither a crowd of that size nor the movie screen existed.
The president even includes references to The Fact Checker in his dubious remarks.
On Oct. 18, in Missoula, Mont., Trump falsely said that no one challenges his description of the Democrats as the party of crime. “Democrats have become the party of crime. It’s true. Who would believe you could say that and nobody even challenges it. Nobody’s ever challenged it,” he said.
But then he had an unusual moment of doubt. “Maybe they have. Who knows? I have to always say that, because then they’ll say they did actually challenge it, and they’ll put like — then they’ll say he gets a Pinocchio.”
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Poor Gribbler. The Clintons have brainwashed him.
Order of the FlyComment
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And the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that Trump said he killed 2 years ago, went into effect today. Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. Indonesia wants to join, and the UK is interested... it needs some trade partners.
This will be a huge boost for Canada (long term), even more lucrative without the US as part of it.There's nothing wrong with the dream, my friend, the problem lies with the dreamer.Comment
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It is not dead. It is sleeping and waiting for Donnie Small Hands to pass.Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate.Comment
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If you are referring to the TPP, Obama fought for it, and Trump withdrew the US from negotiations shortly after he became president. There is nothing for him to sign. If the US wants to join, they need to apply and negotiate. This will not happen as long as Trump is president. -
Dinner is referring to Cthulhu, of course ... Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
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That is CNN talk.
Order of the FlyComment
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I'm fed up with CNN. Instead of Kid they selected some doctor guy as CNN hero, just because he helped ppl or something...
BlahComment
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Dems have really lost their way with this identity politics crap. Organizers in California cancel their women's march because they feared too many white people would show up. Yes, you read that correctly.
Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate.Comment
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I am not delusional! Now if you'll excuse me, i'm gonna go dance with the purple wombat who's playing show-tunes in my coffee cup!
Rules are like Egg's. They're fun when thrown out the window!
Difference is irrelevant when dosage is higher than recommended!Comment
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The snake is just saving them for later.
Actually, aren't cane toads poisonous? I guess the snake knows that and won't touch them.Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate.Comment
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Finally a hyperloop design that works!Comment
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Another Biologist theorizes, that they actually didn't mean to hitch a ride, but rather were trying to perform a gang bang with the snake
https://twitter.com/jodirowley/statu...39595296317440Tamsin (Lost Girl): "I am the Harbinger of Death. I arrive on winds of blessed air. Air that you no longer deserve."
Tamsin (Lost Girl): "He has fallen in battle and I must take him to the Einherjar in Valhalla"Comment
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Originally posted by BBC
and
Originally posted by BBC
https://twitter.com/lexkypolice/stat...230016/photo/1
I am not delusional! Now if you'll excuse me, i'm gonna go dance with the purple wombat who's playing show-tunes in my coffee cup!
Rules are like Egg's. They're fun when thrown out the window!
Difference is irrelevant when dosage is higher than recommended!Comment
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Trump’s shutdown has paralyzed immigration courts. Oh, the irony.
IN THE name of securing the border and keeping out illegal immigrants, President Trump has opted for a partial government shutdown. Irony of ironies, that shutdown has paralyzed the nation’s immigration courts, shuttering many of them and allowing several hundred undocumented immigrants to dodge deportation orders each day the shutdown continues. They are among many hundreds of others whose cases will be postponed for years — or, in effect, indefinitely — for every day the closure lasts.
Those are among the more perverse effects of the Trump shutdown, which has resulted in many of the nation’s roughly 400 immigration judges receiving furlough orders, barring them from coming to work or hearing cases. (Judges who handle cases involving detained migrants in Department of Homeland Security custody remain at work, but not those handling non-detained migrants, whose cases are more numerous.)
The immigration courts are already massively jammed: The backlog is now 1.1 million cases. That means in the 11 days of the shutdown so far, thousands of cases have already been postponed.
Technically, those cases will be rescheduled for three or four years from now. In fact, the backlog has reached such gargantuan proportions that judges are already double- and triple-booking future court dates, like an airline overbooking flights, meaning that many cases on the docket will inevitably be postponed repeatedly. The dysfunction calls to mind the famous New Yorker cartoon in which an executive suggests: “No, Thursday’s out. How about never—is never good for you?”
In many instances, a postponement’s effects are more than administrative; they may impose real hardships. Take the example of undocumented immigrants with clean records who have been in the United States for more than a decade. An immigration judge may exempt such immigrants from the risk of deportation if they can show it would result in exceptional hardship for a spouse, parent or minor child who is a citizen or legal permanent resident. But that chance of relief is lost if, owing to a case’s postponement, the immigrant’s child turns 21, or the parent or spouse dies.
Mr. Trump has poured scorn on the immigration courts, variously suggesting that newly hired judges would be crooked and that immigrants routinely fail to appear for court hearings. In fact, there is zero evidence for the former, and the latter claim has been debunked: While many respondents do not show up for hearings, a sizable majority of them do, especially those represented by lawyers.
What distinguishes the Trump shutdown is that it contravenes the president’s own long-standing insistence on a more rational and efficient immigration system, as he himself defines it. A president who attacks “catch and release ” now embraces a policy that ensures indefinite release. A president hungry for ever more deportations now ensures that thousands of would-be deportees get reprieves. And a president who conjures migrant no-shows in courts manages to close the courts entirely.
own goal?Comment
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Has it cut back on government spending at Trump properties?Comment
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